Cherry Rogers remembers going to the funfair
My first memory of going to the fair is of me sitting in my pram, in Nana’s kitchen, ready to go. My Nana looked out of the window and said, “I don’t know Doll, it’s a bit black over Will’s Mothers.” I piped up, “I don’t want to go to Will’s Mothers. I want to go to the fair.” For anybody who doesn’t know what that means, it means the sky is dark and it looks like rain. I don’t know if only my family said it or it was a common thing to say. I have never found out who Will was or his Mother. When I was little everyone went to the fair, it was looked forward to with great excitement and was always held on the Ram Meadow, the field behind the Ram. Not just kids went, but the whole family. We had candy floss, which stuck to your cheeks and your nose and I loved it. But I didn’t like the spit wash I got afterwards. Ugh.
There was a rifle range and coconut shy, and they were a swizz. They stuck the coconuts on at an angle so they wouldn’t fall over. We did win one once and it was about a hundred years old. There was a stall with yellow ducks floating round and you had to hook them out to win a prize. I won a goldfish once. You got them to take home in a jam jar or in later years a plastic bag. There was hoopla and darts, where you had to hit playing cards. There was roll a penny and you had to land it right in the middle of the square to win and you won in pennies whatever number you landed on. You could win a toy, a coconut or a big chalky ornament of a boy standing with a dog. You could buy rock, humbugs, toffee apples, big slabs of coconut ice and nougat with hazelnuts in it. There was swinging boats and you made them work by pulling a rope with a woolly bit on the end which was red white and blue, like a bell rope. There was dodgems, with bits of metal on top which scraped across a bit of wire netting above the ride and blue sparks came off it. One of the fairground men used to ride on the back of some of the cars and move about to get traffic jams going. My favourite was the carousel, which had horses and bench seats for three or four people to sit together. The bench seats were preferred in the teenage years! The music was loud and you could hear it half way up the High Street. There was noise from generators, with a distinctive smell of smoke, petrol and trodden down grass.
They had a wall of death once and a side show which said come and see the little people. You paid and looked into it and it was, short people having a tea party. How awful is that? When I was in my teens I used to go to the fair to meet boys and go on the dodgem cars with them. Later we went to the funfair at Yarmouth. Some of the rides you see today are mind blowing, I wouldn’t like them! I like to watch people come off them. I bet we still had more fun on the Ram Meadow though.